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Tuesday, 15 December 2015

A question for Tim Peake

Later today Tim Peake, UK astronaut, will be starting his 6 month mission on the International Space Station, and BBC Radio 4's PM programme has asked their audience to send in questions for Tim's first press conference on the ISS.

Here's my question:

Standing in the shoes of the earth what would your advice to its inhabitants be?

By physically distancing ourselves from our own perspective we're able to observe our own behaviour, and provide guidance to ourselves on what changes might be helpful to improve the situation.

Here I'm inviting Tim to act as our missionary. To stand in the shoes of the planet, to leave humanity's perspective behind, and provide guidance on what changes might be helpful.

Remembering the key to the process is NOT taking your own perspective with you, but leaving it behind and really looking at the situation as if you were the other party. That is standing in their shoes, and from their perspective, what would you think and feel, and what advice would you give.

Of course we could all try this at home. The challenge we all have however is - can we really get the level of perspective Tim, and the other astronauts on the ISS, will get. Are we able to distance ourselves enough from our own desires to fully understand the situation from the other party's perspective? That is - to fully understand the situation from the Earth's perspective - and I'm not sure we can.

Many call the perspective I'm asking Tim to share is the Overview effect, and I'm intrigued to hear guidance from this effect in the moment - not many months after the astronauts return to Earth.

Standing in the shoes of the earth what would your advice to its inhabitants be?

(PS from 13th February 2016) Whilst not directly responding to my question I suspect I got my answer see Tim's tweet (press on the pic and it will take you to the tweet with video of the Aurora from the ISS)